Marketing Class Partners with Cave City Tourism

The Cave City Tourist and Convention Commission is pleased to announce their partnership with the Marketing Department of the Gordon Ford College of Business (GFCB) and the Interior Design Department in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences at Western Kentucky University.

“We are very pleased that Dr. Patricia Todd agreed to provide this opportunity to her upper level students to use the Cave City Branding Strategy project as a model for real-life statistical and marketing study,” states Tourism Director Sharon Tabor. “Every town and city should evaluate themselves on a regular basis, just as private industry consistently examines their relevance to the company’s target market. This project will help provide focus to Cave City’s marketing efforts and develop a promotional strategy. It will also provide direction for city improvements and future vision.”

The Cave City Branding Committee has been distributing visitor and resident surveys throughout the summer. The GFCB students will tabulate the results and present opinions and ideas for tourism marketing and community priorities to the committee.

“As an applied College of Business, we value the opportunity to collaborate with the community. Taking what is learned in the classroom and applying it to real-world situations is the ideal learning experience for our students,” said Dr. Jeffrey Katz, Dean of the Gordon Ford College of Business.

Cave City Tourism Commission has also entered into partnership with Shelia Flener, an interior design instructor in the Department of Family and Consumer Sciences. “We are excited to provide a real-life project to our junior interior design students at the Mammoth Cave Area Welcome Center in Cave City,” states Ms. Flener.

“The current Welcome Center has two business entities intermingled”, states Jeff Lawson, Chamber of Commerce President. “This design project will allow us the ability to separate the Chamber of Commerce functions and the Welcome Center into two offices, making customer and visitor interaction more effective,” he says.

“As part of this re-design concept, we want to introduce and expand the community’s sustainable foundation by repurposing local items to retrofit the building interior,” states Tourism Director Sharon Tabor. “We are excited to see what creative ideas the students present for our rehab.”

The marketing and design concepts generated by WKU students will be presented to Cave City officials in November and the projects implemented early 2014.